"The globalization of the debt puts the United States in the position that in order to repay the money that we borrow from the banks (for the banks) we could be forced to accept International Monetary Fund dictates which involve cutting health, social security benefits and all other social spending in addition to reducing wages and exploiting our natural resources. This inevitably leads to a loss of economic, social and political freedom.""

"“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”"

Second link: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/project-vote-denounces-gop-plans/story.aspx?guid={E0968A12-7A8A-4E85-8686-39AE22FCFB50}&dist=hppr

THis is another one of those, 'how could you even consider doing this' things.

Initially I thought Palin just hadn't been paying attention [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and didn't know what she was saying. But as her comment continues to reverberate, her intention becomes increasingly clear: this was not just an offhand or ignorant remark, but rather a big Fuck You to the Supreme Court and its decisions over the last four years. And in this she stands in league with McCain [and Yoo and Addington et al], echoing his disdain for the foundation of democracy.

Anthony Lewis writes:

Three times in the last four years the Supreme Court has rejected the Bush administration's legal defenses of its program for detention of alleged "enemy combatants."

Each of these decisions brought an outcry from the political right. Senator John McCain, a survivor of torture as a prisoner in North Vietnam who was once a critic of the Bush detention practices, called Boumediene "one of the worst decisions in the history of the country."

Opening the federal courts to habeas corpus applications from the detainees hardly promises them a swift ticket to freedom. But it marks at least a first step toward accountability—a forum where the treatment of a detainee and the asserted reasons for his imprisonment can be examined. As George Will wrote in a column blasting Senator McCain for the ignorance of his comments on habeas corpus, "the Supreme Court's ruling only begins marking a boundary against government's otherwise boundless power to detain people indefinitely."

A striking example of the importance of having courts check official decisions that someone is an "enemy combatant" is the case of Huzaifa Parhat, one of a number of Uighur Muslims from China who are in Guantánamo. Parhat, who the US military claimed was at a Uighur training camp in Afghanistan in 2001, was captured in Pakistan in the fall of 2001. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found in June that there was no persuasive evidence to support the government's labeling of him as an enemy combatant. The panel included the court's chief judge, David Sentelle, one of the most conservative federal judges in the country. Its opinion ridiculed the government argument, comparing it to the statement of a Lewis Carroll character: "I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."

Last night, at 12:40am, my son and I went outside to see the moon, which, unfortunately, was behind the trees. Our house is way up on a hill, with a valley below that has cow pasture in front of us, and a good many apartments on each side of that. Things that happen down in the valley echo up here pretty well.

Then about 5 minutes later, there was suddenly several folks down in the valley arguing politics. It went on for about an hour - maybe more - in the middle of the night, on a school night, until someone called the police. (Not me.)

It was so heated, that my son said, let's go in before we have to hear them shoot each other.

I'm not a nosy neighbor - this was so far away I don't even know where it was, but it was so loud that anyone outside could hear it. It seemed to start as a lover's spat, involving a woman feeling perhaps jilted by her man's interest in politics, that spread as some neighbors came out to argue politics.

My thought was, we are more polarized that ever? Is this sort of thing, more of what is to come? Neighbors hating each other over red/blue positions?

It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she delivered this put-down of Obama: "Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

But Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for more than a decade, said captured suspects deserve to file writs of habeus corpus.

Calling it "the foundation of Anglo-American law," he said the principle "says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, 'Why was I grabbed?' And say, 'Maybe you've got the wrong person.'"

"The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting."

Palin's quip was troubling; I'm pleased to see Obama call her on it, but I don't expect her to seriously engage the subject. It was a throwaway line for her.

Here are two threads on the subject from earlier this year:

Benjamin Wittes’ Law and the Long War is required reading for anyone interested in the legal challenges posed by the war on terror.

Six years after the September 11 attacks, America is losing a crucial front in the ongoing war on terror. It is losing not to Al Qaeda but to its own failure to construct a set of laws that will protect the American people—its military and executive branch, as well as its citizens—in the midst of a conflict unlike any it has faced in the past.

Marsha Blackburn said today, about Sarah Palin (I paraphrase, but I went slackjawed when she said it on c-span)

"She's a fine mother, business woman, and executive. She's been in the trenches running those PTO meetings and organizing those school events. Now, a lot of mothers know, if you can run a PTO meeting, you can MAKE those important decisions."

Wow. Putin better get ready. We can always stick a titty in his mouth and hand him some girl scout cookies.

I had to 'log' this somewhere. I came home today looking for it in the news, but no one is bothering to report it. I'm sure Cspan will replay it tonight if anyone wants to verify. How stupid do they think we are?